His Mercy Endureth For Ever

This phase occurs at least 41 times (or more, depending on how you count) in Holy Scripture.

Matthew Gallatin's latest podcast discusses how the penal substitution theory of atonement depicts a changing God (and how ironic that is, given that this theory also relies upon the Platonic God of Perfect Order). This alone, he points out, is enough to refute that theory.

But what interested me most about this talk was a different point I've never heard anyone mention before. It has to do with the Platonic belief that the soul is naturally immortal.

Orthodoxy insists this is not the case. St. Paul writes that Christ alone has immortality. (I Timothy 6:16) Immortality is a divine attribute, like being eternal. "I am the way and the truth and the life," says Christ, and, "I am the resurrection and the life." Christ, by His resurrection, has shared His immortality with the whole human race, conferring it upon one and all. Nevertheless, it is still in God alone we live and move and have our being. (Acts 17:28) God's gift of life is ongoing; He sustains us in life at every moment, and if He should stop for an instant, we would all perish.

Some of us may turn this gift of immortality to our own everlasting regret, which is entirely and in every sense our own doing.

Here's the point: if it were God's doing (as a reaction to sin), this would mean God was every moment keeping the damned alive in hell specifically for the purpose of everlastingly tormenting them. He wouldn't even be merciful enough to let them just die.

Hostility and Penal Substitutionary Atonement

(Part 2 of 2)

People who by inflicting punishment upon themselves feel temporary relief from guilt and who mistake that for atonement, also tend to feel others must be punished for the same reason. For them, justice means feeling better, and I feel better when my neighbor endures sufferings commensurate with the pain he has caused others, especially me.

Evangelicals perhaps would come along and say, “But you don’t have to punish your neighbor yourself! Look, God has done it for you. He has punished everyone vicariously in Christ. You can afford to be good and kind both to your neighbor and to your enemy, and in fact you must be. Otherwise, if you deny that God has already taken care of his punishment, you are denying God has already taken care of your own.”

In this system, if my enemy repents, that means he has seen the error of his ways and I get the satisfaction of knowing there is still punishment, albeit vicarious. If he doesn’t repent, he still will see the error of his ways eventually, and in addition to what Christ suffered for him, he will receive direct punishment. Either way, he’s going to be very sorry for what he did to me, and the gratification this gives me is thought, euphemistically, to be justice. (The tip-off that this is not justice is that if he suffers more pain than he had caused me, that’s fine, too. All the better!)

If God did not punish each and every sin, one person told me, there would be no moral foundation for the Universe. But of course the foundation of the Universe, for a Christian, isn’t exactly morality in the Old Testament sense; it’s Jesus Christ.

There is such a thing as punishment. Sin all by itself punishes the sinner very grievously, far more than we normally perceive; not only does every evil that befalls us come directly from the sin in us and in the world, but even greater unseen, spiritual consequences afflict and destroy us. It is not as though anybody ever just got away with anything, even when it appears that way.

There is punishment, but to hope my neighbor will be punished in any way, even vicariously in Christ, is hardly forgiveness! In fact, there is only one attitude that ever hopes another will suffer and it is hostility, the very opposite of forgiveness. That sense of gratification when I see someone who has done wrong getting what I think he deserves is a gratification specifically of my hostility. If a person were to cling to the comfort of his neighbor getting his come-uppance vicariously in Jesus, that would be nothing but hostility trying to seem pious. Well, I take back the “nothing but”, since fear may also play a role, fear of what could happen to me if there is no deterrent. Either way, the doctrine of vicarious punishment amounts to my relying upon God the Father to punish my “enemies”, directly and/or in Christ. My hostility toward my enemies is what Christ works out in His passion. Perish the thought!

If I love my enemies enough, then I will not need there to be any vicarious punishment of them. Why is this? It is because perfect love would mean I had already given everything away; and having given away all, would have nothing more to lose. That is why “perfect love casts out fear”: there is nothing left to fear losing. All I have to lose if my enemy is forgiven is the gratification of my sinful hostility. But insofar as I love, I have already given up that hostility. “Love seeks not her own.”

Christ instructed us to forgive one another specifically in order to be like our Father in heaven, Who makes His sun to shine upon the just and the unjust, Who blesses the just and the unjust alike with His rain. If we fail to forgive, then, we remain unlike God, incompatible with Him and separate from Him.

We must all find, if we haven’t already, how to overcome this hope in the existence of any kind of punishment of others. This is an urgent matter, because Christ said, if you do not forgive your brother from the heart, God will not forgive you; that is, His forgiveness toward you, although it is eternal, will be unable to take effect in your unforgiving heart. “For judgment is without mercy to the one who has done no mercy, and mercy triumphs over judgment.” (James 2:13) So we must at all costs give up the demand that there be at least vicarious punishment, and let forgiveness like a mighty river roll. It’s the only spiritually healthy and mentally healthy way.

Christ also said, “Go and learn what this means: ‘I will have mercy and not sacrifice.’”

Guilt and Penal Substitutionary Atonement

(Part 1 of 2)

When people are suffering from “the terrors of the conscience” (to appropriate a Lutheran phrase), they can sometimes temporarily soothe their guilt feelings by suffering. Apparently, their theory (more of a feeling, really, I suppose) is that suffering is what I deserve; therefore, if I suffer enough to balance out my guilt, that makes things okay again. I have been paid back. (I, not God.) There’s a monk in the book, The Da Vinci Code, who is always whipping himself to expiate his guilt. There is a whole ascetical phenomenon among Roman Catholics based upon punishing oneself for ones sins.

The trouble with such an approach is that it doesn’t work, or at least not for very long. No matter how cleansed a person may feel he has become by his suffering, or even how virtuous he may feel for having endured it, before long the wolves are back at the door. The bad conscience soon re-asserts itself.

One reason for this is that no amount of suffering a person inflicts upon himself could even begin to compare with the amount of guilt he feels he has already accrued – much less what he is still racking up.

But the more important reason punishment doesn’t still the conscience for long is that the relief from guilt which people experience by suffering is illusory. Suffering pacifies the conscience temporarily while leaving the underlying problem of guilt intact. Sufferers remain just as guilty as before, and just as guilty as non-sufferers – and they know it. There is nothing about suffering per se that purges sin or delights God. Guilt needs an altogether different antidote.

Evangelicals might tell someone who was trapped in this sick cycle, “You don’t have to flagellate yourself; Jesus was scourged for you. You don’t have to beat up on yourself, for Jesus was beat up in your place. God isn’t going to get you; He had Jesus put to death instead.”

This position is indeed an improvement. It keeps a person from doing himself bodily harm. It also provides a somewhat stronger palliative, because Christ’s suffering is said to have infinite merit, while anyone else’s will never have enough.

But the truth is, suffering itself has no merit! Perhaps we feel it has because in sinning we had sought pleasure, and suffering is felt to balance out the pleasure. Perhaps it does, but it does nothing to cure the guilt; there is no connection between the two. There is nothing inherently virtuous about suffering in itself. Instead, this is the very same unhealthy dynamic as before (punish­ment to alleviate guilt), except punishment is now displaced onto Jesus. Now He is the One who bears the punishment in my place. Even vicarious suffering is still the wrong remedy for guilt. In fact is no remedy at all, but still only a palliative.

Worse, it allows one to avoid the only true and effectual and lasting cure for a terrified conscience; namely, making a U-turn in his life, aka repentance. Stop doing the things that hurt your conscience! Some people (not all who hold to penal substitutionary atonement, of course!) would rather suffer for their guilt than give up their guilty behavior – or better still, have Christ do it for them. This hardly shows any love for Christ! If we loved Him unselfishly, it would be no more acceptable to us that God should beat up on our dear Lord than on us. In fact, it’s less acceptable. I do not want God to wallop my beloved Christ for sins I have committed! "Let Him kill me if He cannot forgive, " would be love's cry, "but leave my Christ alone!"

Jesus came preaching: “Repent and believe the Gospel.” (Mark 1:15) Repentance is the only thing that works in the long run to cure a bad conscience, repentance and faith in God’s infinite love and measureless forgiveness.

Repentance is not merely acknowledging one’s sins and asking forgiveness. It isn’t even asking forgiveness plus trusting in Christ to save me. No, not even begging for forgiveness with trust and tears and prostrations is yet repentance. Punishing myself is not repentance, either; it is pseudo-repentance. Repentance is changing course. Until I turn around and take a new direction, my conscience is going to gnaw at me no matter what, and quite rightly, too -- no matter who suffers or how much! Conversely, once I repent in faith, the guilt simply disappears which had caused me to feel the need of punishment (whether direct or vicarious) and I discover true forgiveness, which is totally free.

Does God’s forgiveness being pure gift mean there is no need for atonement? No. It means atonement does not include literal punishment – or any kind of payment to God as a precondi­tion of His forgiveness or in exchange for it or as a basis of it. Christ atoned for our guilt by His offering of perfect obedience (i.e., obedience even unto death) and atoned for the death in us by the shedding of His life-bearing blood, our Fountain of Immortality.

Is it wrong for God to forgive outright, freely? Certainly not. This is the sovereign Lord God, who can do whatever He pleases with His own. Moreover, sin all by itself has already meted out untold punishment, by killing us, by depriving us of life with God, by wrecking our world, by eroding character and bringing every kind of woe upon us, from sickness to war to famine to death. The punishment sin itself has inflicted upon us has the advantage of being given to the right person, the sinner, and in exact proportion to his sins. God does not need to worsen that punishment in order to maintain His perfect justice. Rather, Divine Justice means putting everything right again, which means getting rid of sin, which means on the one hand forgiving us and on the other hand curing us, for God is pleased not when sin is punished, but when it ceases, replaced by obedience.

Repent and believe the gospel. To require that God should punish anybody, whether directly or vicari­ously, is to deny the existence of true forgiveness. For displaced punishment is exactly that, displaced punishment, while forgiveness is remitting punishment instead of executing it, revoking the sentence instead of carrying it out, cancelling debt rather than collecting it, not exercising one's right to recompense or retaliation.

Repentance and faith and forgiveness are gifts from God, but gifts He will most assuredly give to all who ask. Seek and ye shall find. Knock and it shall be opened to you. Blessed are those who hunger and thirst after righteousness, for they shall be filled.

May God open the gates of true repentance to every one of us!